Chasing Self-Esteem's Shadow

I'm in favor of self-esteem. It's a good thing to have, if we judge
from the depressed, defensive, or hostile behavior of people who don't
have enough of it. I'm also in favor of educational and parental
efforts to increase children's appreciation for their gender, race, or
heritage. When I was a child, my parents were forever feeding me
biographies of Great Women-Harriet Tubman, Elizabeth Blackwell, Susan
B. Anthony, Marie Curie, Pocahontas-and I'm sure these books influenced
my ambition, at 6, to be the world's first woman bus driver.

Today, however, self-esteem is a mere shadow of its former self.
Once, it referred to a fundamental sense of self-worth; today that
meaning has narrowed into merely feeling good about oneself.
Self-esteem used to rest on the daily acts of effort, care, and
accomplishment that are the bedrock of character; now it rests on air,
on being instead of doing. Healthy self-esteem used to fall between the
equally unhealthy states of insecurity and narcissism; now it runs from
"low" to "high," with no recognition, in these greedy times, that some
feel too good about themselves, for no good reason.

None of this would matter, except that the murky psychological
concept of self-esteem has become a blueprint for educational reform.
The new goal increasingly is to make children "feel better' about their
gender, race, or ethnicity.

In Detroit recently, a black teacher described the benefits of
Afrocentric education for black boys. When they see a traffic light, he
said, they should know it was invented by a black man, Garrett Morgan.
Well, yes, they should. But what if the traffic light had been invented
by a Chinese-Lithuanian immigrant woman? Does that mean that black boys
cannot aspire to become inventors or traffic engineers?

The education historian Diane Ravitch refers to an interview she
read with a talented black runner who models herself after Mikhail
Baryshnikov. Baryshnikov is not black, female, a runner, or
American-born, but he inspired this athlete because of his training and
skill.

All students in American society, regardless of race, should learn
about slavery, the civil rights movement, and the contributions of
black men and women. And each student would do well to study the
specific, truthful history of his or her own culture-its venal, stupid,
and murderous contributions to the world drama as well as its noble,
smart, and generous ones. But as Ms. Ravitch points out, "knowing about
the travails and triumphs of one's forebears does not necessarily
translate into either self-esteem or personal accomplishment."

In fact, self-esteem is not necessarily related to academic
success.

Delinquent teenage boys have very high self-esteem; they feel they
are heroes to their peers.

Black adolescent girls have higher self-esteem and confidence than
white girls, but, to preserve this in a system they perceive is always
putting them down, they are also more likely to drop out of school and
reject white authorities. White girls show a depressingly large drop in
self-esteem between childhood and high school, but many nonetheless go
to college.

The psychologist Hazel Marcus at the University of Michigan argues
that a more revealing sign of adolescents' self-worth lies not in how
good they feel about themselves but in what they can envision for
themselves in the future. People are guided by these "possible selves"
that help us imagine what we can become (for better and worse) and that
motivate us to reach our ideals.

Possible selves are unrelated to self-esteem, but they are better
predictors of behavior. Delinquent boys may have high self-esteem, but
when asked to imagine their futures, most see themselves as being
depressed, alone, addicted, or in jail.

So I propose a moratorium on self-esteem as a psychological concept
and as an educational blueprint. Parents and educators would do better
to focus on helping children achieve competence, perseverance, and
optimism the real contents of self-worth. They would do better to help
children discover or invent their own visions of what they can become
even if no one of their gender, race, or culture has ever done it
before. True self-esteem will follow.

Carole Tavris is social psychologist active in the critical-thinking
movement in California; she has co-authored a textbook on critical
thinking, as well as Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion. This essay first
appeared in The Los Angeles Times and is reprinted by permission.

Vol. 11, Issue 07, Page 26

Published in Print: October 16, 1991, as Chasing Self-Esteem's Shadow

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